from:"thomas"

Hi,

i read from bytes 2085412 to 2085479:
  "Info rrmation Syste rm VolumeSYSTEM~"
which is similar to the alterations of one of the USB sticks shown in
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1056998#35

The web knows about a Microsoft folder named "System Volume Information".
  
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/system-volume-information-what-is-it-and-what-is/3bc81844-0baa-46bd-9949-4efb4678b677
  "whenever I put my flash-drive or my micro sd adapter and sd card into
   my windows 8.1 something called "System Volume Information" is always
   getting added on."

So did you perhaps show this USB stick to a running MS-Windows system ?


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Debian ISOs on USB stick

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> # cmp --verbose debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso /dev/sdb

I got my copy from

https://get.debian.org/images/archive/11.3.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso
SHA256 matches:
  7892981e1da216e79fb3a1536ce5ebab157afdd20048fe458f2ae34fbc26c19b

In a further mail:
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/11.3.0/amd64/iso-cd/

Same SHA256 there.

>   2083201   0 377

Byte counting of cmp is decimal and starts at 1. xorriso can search for
files which have their data in a block range. 2083201 / 2048 = block 1017.
Range size in this case is just 1 block:

  $ xorriso -indev debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso -find / -lba_range 1017 1 
-exec report_lba --
  ...
  Report layout: xt , Startlba ,   Blocks , Filesize , ISO image path
  File data lba:  0 , 1016 , 1296 ,  2654208 , '/boot/grub/efi.img'

So it's indeed occupied by the FAT filesystem image which contains the
EFI-specific boot equipment.

>   4719105   0  56

Byte 4719105 is in block 2304, i.e. still in /boot/grub/efi.img, which
has bytes up to the end of block 2311.

I guess the bytes with the 2xx numbers are the directory change and
the 4xx numbers are content of new files.

You could mount both ISOs (e.g. at /mnt/iso1 and /mnt/iso2) and then the
two FAT image files (e.g. /mnt/iso1/boot/grub/efi.img and
/mnt/iso2/boot/grub/efi.img) in order to learn which files have emerged
or changed in the USB stick's mounted FAT filesystem.

Maybe we find a new ESP groper additionaly to Lenovo and Microsoft.
Usually they leave traces for which one can search in the web.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Debian ISOs on USB stick, was: SOLVED

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> It's a relatively simple experiment to confirm that a USB flash drive with
> d-i changes after the first boot.

This could still be
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1056998
where Lenovo BIOS and/or MS-Windows altered the USB stick.

> Same for finding which bytes change.

I fail to find this particular info in
  Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 14:46:42 -0700
  From: David Christensen 
  Message-ID: 

If we have the exact ISO name (i.e. URL from where it stems) and the
byte address of the alteration, xorriso can find the affected file, if
any.

In case of bug #1056998 it was the EFI partition image /boot/grub/efi.img.
Mounting the altered and unaltered image files showed changes in the
FAT filesystem which point to the culprits Lenovo and Microsoft.

The other plausible way of altering the ISO image on the stick would be
adding a new partition.
The MBR partition table is part of the Debian ISO and thus part of the
checksummed area. Even if all other alterations happen after the end
of the checksummed ISO image, the changed partition table will cause the
Debian checksum to become invalid.

(I am not aware that Debian installer changes the table. If it does indeed
then this might be worth a new bug discussion.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Debian 12.5: pigz 2.6-1 fails with error message (Upstream issue 111)

Hi,

Chung  Jonathan wrote:
> Yes, I think the local fix is the way to go.

I wrote:
> > (You forgot to Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org.
> > Consider to send your mail to the list address, too. I too would then
> > resend my following reply to the list.)

Since my "following reply" is quoted in Jonathan Chung's reply to the list
i don't have to resend it. (I gave my opinion that the problem is not a
bug in the context of Debian 12 or 13 and pointed to
https://wiki.debian.org/BuildingTutorial for a private fix of the problem.)

Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Your problem is one that plagues Linux. You compile and link against
> one version of a library, and then you runtime link against another
> version.

This should not be a problem with a well maintained library which cares
to stay ABI compatible with its older releases.
In the present case it was a bug in the loading program pigz which
prevented zlib from being usable.

> I consider it a
> security bug since essentially random libraries are being loaded at
> runtime.
> To fix the problem yourself, add an RPATH to your LDFLAGS when
> building your program:
> -Wl,-rpath=/path/to/expected/libz -Wl,--enable-new-dtags

Well, this is nearly as unflexible as static compilation but does not
seem to prevent the use of a replaced library at the given path.

Using .so files has its advantages and disadvantages. For a distro the
advantage (without the pigz bug) is that customers of different versions
of a library can be consolidated to using the newest available version.
An advantage for the user is that bugs in a library can be fixed without
the need for re-building all its customers.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Debian ISOs on USB stick, was: SOLVED

2024-04-02 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> > the Debian installer modifies the contents of the USB flash drive when
> > it runs.

Do you mean inside the range of the ISO image or outside by creating a
new partition ?

songbird wrote:
> if it is an iso image copied to the USB stick it should not
> be modified if you haven't somehow told the installer to
> install the system to that USB stick (somehow).

There are other parties which feel entitled to operate on the EFI System
Partition of a USB stick.
In
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1056998
we found that Lenovo Thinkpad firmware created directories for storing
an empty file named "/efi/Lenovo/BIOS/SelfHealing.fd" and that MS-Windows
created a 12-byte file named "/System Volume Information/WPSettings.dat"
when it had contact with the USB stick.

> i guess if you wanted to be really sure you could mount it read-only.

I think it's the installer which mounts the ISO 9660 filesystem.
Whatever, the Linux kernel has no regular means to alter an ISO 9660
filesystem. Neither kernel nor Debain installer will be so daring to
operate with byte level commands on that filesystem.

But the FAT filesystem in file /boot/grub/efi.img of the ISO 9660
filesystem in debian-12.*-amd64-netinst.iso is advertised by the partition
table of the image and thus attracts vermin.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Debian 12.5: pigz 2.6-1 fails with error message (Upstream issue 111)

2024-04-02 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Jonathan Chung wrote:
> > pigz 2.6-1 on Debian 12.5 fails to execute due to a fixed bug on
> > upstream https://github.com/madler/pigz/issues/111
> > Installing the version from sid resolves the issue which is clearly not
> > optimal. I think the fix should be backported.
> > Can someone help me to file a bug report?

Michael Kjörling wrote:
> https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

This covers the question "how", but not "what".
So my two cents:

"Backported" is probably the wrong wish.
  https://backports.debian.org/Contribute/
says:
  "Backports are about additional features that are only offered in a
   new version, not a replacement for getting fixes into stable - use
   stable-updates for that."

That would probably mean to patch the existing pigz package in Debian 12
by the upstream remedy
  "Make pigz compatible with two-component zlib version numbers. "
  https://github.com/madler/pigz/commit/907ca0763be4547a9b0cce8c105721748814974

pigz.c:
@@ -1333,7 +1333,7 @@ local long zlib_vernum(void) {
}
ver++;
} while (left);
-   return left < 2 ? num << (left << 2) : -1;
+   return left < 3 ? num << (left << 2) : -1;
 }

 // -- check value combination routines for parallel calculation --

The new state can already be seen in
  https://sources.debian.org/src/pigz/2.8-1/pigz.c/#L1339
The old state is in
  https://sources.debian.org/src/pigz/2.6-1/pigz.c/#L1317
But there the "// -- check ..." comment is missing in favor of a line
  #ifndef NOTHREAD
So a patch proposal would need some minor hand work.

There remains the question, though, why you run into zlib-1.3 on a
Debian "stable" system where the zlib version is "1:1.2.13.dfsg-1":
  https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zlib

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: printing QR-codes on labels with 300dpi label printers with LaTeX

2024-03-20 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Max Nikulin wrote:
> I admit "dithering" may be incorrect term, [...]
> Consider 2 squares having size of 2.5×2.5 pixels. Non-even sizes and fuzzy
> lines variants:
> █████
> ██████
> ████ ██
>██ ██
>█████
> Second variant might have sense if an image is treated as a photo unlikely
> having regular patterns with horizontal and vertical lines.

I see ...
The second rendering style is probably best described as "Bad Distortion".


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: How does the 64bits time_t transition work?

2024-03-20 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Marco Moock wrote:
> The libs will have a suffix of t64

I wonder whether those suffixes will go away at some stage of this effort.

(Further i wonder when the package tracker appearance of libisoburn
 will become less ugly than currently:
   https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libisoburn
 and how i shall deal with a bug report which complains about the
 inconsistent state of the control file in respect to libburn and
 libisofs:
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1067103
)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: printing QR-codes on labels with 300dpi label printers with LaTeX

2024-03-19 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Max Nikulin wrote:
> When vector graphics, that does not match device resolution, is rasterized,
> the result is either non-even sizes of similar elements or fuzzy lines due
> to dithering.

Nitpicking:

"Dithering" in raster graphics is emulation of color resolution at the
expense of space resolution. Multiple coarsly colored pixels together
create the impression of a finer color tone. A certain random aspect is
added to prevent unwanted patters.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither

The fuzzy lines are rather the opposite. They use surplus color
resolution to emulate ibetter spacial resolution. Over here the usual
term is "Anti-aliasing".
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_drawing_algorithm
  https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/antialiasing/
I get a suspiciously high share of german language results when
searching this term in the web. But "Computer Grapics" by Foley, Van Dam,
Feiner, Hughes of 1990 has a dozen occurences in its Index.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: After installing no access to the installed system.


Am Mo., 18.März.2024 um 17:06:51 schrieb Marco Moock:

Am 18.03.2024 um 15:49:29 Uhr schrieb Thomas Schweikle:


And: after rebooting without any CD/DVD it just boots into an error:
no system found.


EFI or old BIOS system?
If EFI: Does a boot entry exist?


EFI. While not installing grub, no boot entry is created too. It seems 
the installer fails silently at some point, after having installed all 
packages. Maybe it fails installing grub?

--
Thomas



OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: After installing no access to the installed system.


Am Mo., 18.März.2024 um 16:44:32 schrieb Greg Wooledge:

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 03:24:14PM +0100, Thomas Schweikle wrote:

Package: Debian installer
Version: As on Debian live-CD/DVD for Debian 12.5
Severity: critical


Note that you sent this email to the debian-user list, not to the bug
tracking system.


I know. The bog tracking system wants me to use reportbug, but since I 
do not have access to the installed system i cant use reportbug to 
report a bug.



6. For User and Passwort enter
 Full name: demo Demo
 Username: de-de
 Password 1st: start123
 Password 2nd: start123
7. Click install
8. Wait until the installer finishes and reboots into this newly installed
system
9. Try to login with the credentials given above:
 User: de-de
 Password: start123

The newly installed system just tells: unknown user or password, user or
password wrong. You wont be able to login.


I wonder if it's the hyphen character.  Maybe the installer transforms
that into an underscore, or omits it entirely?  That's just a guess.


Thought it too, but it is not. The user isn't created even if i just 
name it without any specials. I've even tried to install using en_US. 
But without success: same problem. The user account is not created.



Anyway, try logging in as "dede" or "de_de", just to see if one of those
works.  Otherwise, you'll need to boot in rescue mode (or any equivalent
of your choice), and look at the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files.
See what happened.


It is even more wired: if the installed system is rebooted from install 
media -- after finishing installation the system does boot, but is not 
accessible. In lack of any useable user account created.


If i then remove installation media and reboot, the system just does not 
find anything to boot into: the bootloader is not installed at all! Grub 
is missing!


The after-install-reboot is triggered without going the whole way: they 
"boot" by loading the kernel from the running install system kernel 
using kexec. This is faster and avoids rebooting into the install system 
again, but it wont work if the boot system is just about to be missing, 
because neither grub nor systemd.boot are installed.

--
Thomas



OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: After installing no access to the installed system.

Am Mo., 18.März.2024 um 15:24:14 schrieb Thomas Schweikle:

Package: Debian installer
Version: As on Debian live-CD/DVD for Debian 12.5
Severity: critical

1. Download debian live-CD/DVD from:
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso <https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso> or https://ftp.gwdg.de/debian-cd/12.5.0-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso <https://ftp.gwdg.de/debian-cd/12.5.0-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso>

2. Boot from this DVD
3. Doubble click on "Install to harddisk"
4. Select to erase a partitioned harddisk
5. Select "German"
6. For User and Passwort enter
Full name: demo Demo
Username: de-de
Password 1st: start123
Password 2nd: start123
7. Click install
8. Wait until the installer finishes and reboots into this newly
installed system

9. Try to login with the credentials given above:
User: de-de
Password: start123

The newly installed system just tells: unknown user or password, user or
password wrong. You wont be able to login.

Having a closer look at the system installed:
- The system language ist set to en_US, instead, as selected to de_DE.
- The keyboard language and layout ist set to en_US, instead, as
selected to de_DE.

- The user given isn't created at all.
- The password isn't entered into /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.
- Root is created, but does not have a password, while passwordless
logins are prohibited

Conclusion: it is not possible to login to the system. Youl have to hack
it to get access.

And: after rebooting without any CD/DVD it just boots into an error: no
system found.

--
Thomas

OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

After installing no access to the installed system.

Package: Debian installer
Version: As on Debian live-CD/DVD for Debian 12.5
Severity: critical

1. Download debian live-CD/DVD from:
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso
or
https://ftp.gwdg.de/debian-cd/12.5.0-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.5.0-amd64-xfce.iso
2. Boot from this DVD
3. Doubble click on "Install to harddisk"
4. Select to erase a partitioned harddisk
5. Select "German"
6. For User and Passwort enter
Full name: demo Demo
Username: de-de
Password 1st: start123
Password 2nd: start123
7. Click install
8. Wait until the installer finishes and reboots into this newly installed
system
9. Try to login with the credentials given above:
User: de-de
Password: start123

The newly installed system just tells: unknown user or password, user or
password wrong. You wont be able to login.
Having a closer look at the system installed:
- The system language ist set to en_US, instead, as selected to de_DE.
- The keyboard language and layout ist set to en_US, instead, as selected
to de_DE.
- The user given isn't created at all.
- The password isn't entered into /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.
- Root is created, but does not have a password, while passwordless logins
are prohibited

Conclusion: it is not possible to login to the system. Youl have to hack it
to get access.

-- 
Thomas

Re: OT: End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

2024-03-16 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Curt wrote:
> as I believe Paul Valéry once noted, even the past isn't what it used
> to be.

That's why i want everything back exactly the way as it never was.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: OT: End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

2024-03-16 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

when i was a young Babyboomer in the late 1970s we were accused of
destroying society by a "twin culture of sexual license and cannabis".
The big Decline of the West was a sure thing, accelerated by excessive
tv consumption.
Other future threats were drying up oil wells, a comming ice age,
and the unstoppable fertility of the asian peoples.

Meanwhile the future is past and the pundits of the 70s are dead and
ridiculed.
Predictions are difficult - especially when it's about the future.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Spam from the list?

2024-03-08 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Andy Smith wrote:
> [...] I argue that at present it
> isn't a good idea to just reject all DKIM failures like OP's mailbox
> provider appears to be doing.

Just for the records:
The mails in question don't get rejected but rather marked as spam
and then get delivered.

The currently best theory is that megamailservers.eu adds a header
  X-Spam-Flag: YES
if it perceives DKIM problems, and that the local anti-spam software
of the receiver takes this header as reason to alter the subject by
the prefix "*SPAM*".

Whether it is a good idea to map DKIM failure to a spam marking header
is another interesting topic.

Original post of this thread with an example of all headers of a mail:
  https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/3371640.PXJkl210th@protheus2

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Commandline client to lookup MAC vendor

2024-03-07 Thread Thomas Pircher


Lee wrote:

I haven't tried either package - I just use the file from IEEE


Sure, that's directly from the source. One has to find a compromise
between always using the latest version and using a limited common
resources (like ieee's bandwidth in this case) in a responsible way.

Thomas

Re: Commandline client to lookup MAC vendor

2024-03-07 Thread Thomas Pircher


On 2024-03-07 10:11, Ralph Aichinger wrote:

Any idea if one or the other is preferable or newer?


I think there is not much difference between the two files, the 
ieee-data packages the data directly from the IEEE, with nmap you have 
one intermediary project that needs to download and release the file 
before Debian can pick it up.


Then on the other hand, the ieee-data package is one minor version 
behind on the data, while the nmap file was modified ~6 months ago in 
Debian's VCS.


The only difference I can see is that with the ieee-data package you get 
some visibility which upstream version was used, while it would take 
more effort to trace that back in the nmap case.


Thomas

Re: Commandline client to lookup MAC vendor

2024-03-07 Thread Thomas Pircher


On 2024-03-07 09:37, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

$ grep -i ^9009df /usr/share/nmap/nmap-mac-prefixes
9009DF Intel Corporate


Alternatively, the ieee-data package also contains the OUI database:

$ grep -i ^9009df /usr/share/ieee-data/oui.txt
9009DF (base 16)Intel Corporate

Thomas

Re: Spam from the list?

2024-03-06 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Hans wrote:
> Re: *SPAM* Re: Spam from the list?
> In-Reply-To: <20240306112253.55e25...@earth.stargate.org.uk>

referring the mail

> > Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2024 11:22:53 +
> > From: Brad Rogers 
> > Message-ID: <20240306112253.55e25...@earth.stargate.org.uk>

I assume that this mail appeared with the "*SPAM*" marker in
your mailbox.
(The currently most plausible theory is that megamailservers.eu adds
"X-Spam-Flag: YES" and your local mail processing takes this header as
reason to change the subject.)

So what does the mail which you received from Brad via debian-user
say about "Authentication-Results:" ?
Your initial post quoted three such headers. Expect more than one.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Spam from the list?

2024-03-06 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Hans wrote:
> I changed nothing and suddenly many mails from debian-user
> (but not all, only some) are recognized as spam.

But the one you posted here did not come from debian-user.

So maybe what changed is an inadverted subscription to one of
  debian-bugs-d...@lists.debian.org
  debian-de...@lists.debian.org
  debian-pyt...@lists.debian.org,
  w...@debian.org
This might have broadened the set of mail senders and thus gives your
mail provider opportunities to complain like spotted by Dan Ritter:

> Authentication-Results: mail104c50.megamailservers.eu;
>   dkim=fail reason="signature verification failed" (4096-bit key)
> header.d=4angle.com header.i=@4angle.com header.b="bS+3bWmq"

"4angle.com" matches the mail address of the bug submitter
"Edward Betts ".


The shown message headers offer unsubscription from debian-devel:

> List-Unsubscribe: 
> <mailto:debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I.e. to send a mail to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with the
subject line
  unsubscribe


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Spam from the list?

2024-03-06 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Hans wrote:
> during the last moonths I get more mails from the debian-user list marked as
> spam than before.
> [...]
> Below I send the header of an example of such a mail, maybe you can see the
> reason?

The message does not look like it came to you via debian-user:

> X-Original-To: lists-debian-de...@bendel.debian.org
> Delivered-To: lists-debian-de...@bendel.debian.org
> Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
> by bendel.debian.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B720220598
> for ; Wed,  6 Mar 2024
> [...]
> Resent-To: debian-bugs-d...@lists.debian.org
> Resent-CC: debian-de...@lists.debian.org, debian-pyt...@lists.debian.org,
> w...@debian.org

Are you perhaps subscribed to one of the "Resent-*" lists ?


> Subject: *SPAM* Bug#1065537: ITP: bleak-retry-connector -- Connector
> for Bleak Clients that handles transient connection failures

The mark "*SPAM*" does not appear in the archive

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/03/msg00076.html

All in all it looks like a legit message, not like spam.
So the suspect would sit after Debian's mail servers.


The only Received header i see between Debian and you is:

> Received: from bendel.debian.org (bendel.debian.org [82.195.75.100])
> by mail104c50.megamailservers.eu (8.14.9/8.13.1) with ESMTP
> id 4269vZOl098298
> for ; Wed, 6 Mar 2024 09:57:37 +

It looks like either megamailservers.eu or your own processing added
the spam mark to the subject.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: How to upgrade the GLIBCXX and GLIBC to the specific version

2024-02-28 Thread Thomas Pircher


Gremlin wrote:

The new OS called Raspberry Pi OS is a new animal.  The foundation
used raspian and the the Raspberry Pi OS is the foundations, developed
by the foundation.


Yet it is still based on Debian, according to their changelog
https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_arm64/release_notes.txt

| 2023-10-10:
|  * Based on Debian bookworm release

Re: partition reporting full, but not

2024-02-20 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

> when cfdisk reports:
> Device  Start   End  Sectors   Size  Type
> /dev/sda2   1785522176  1786245119 722944  353M  EFI System
> /dev/sda3   1786245120  1933045759  146800640  70G   EFI System
> I don't understand the 'EFI System' note /dev/sda3 is /

The partition type does not necessarily match the type of filesystem
which is currently in that partition. It's just a field in the
partition table which must have some value.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Contact Name...

2024-02-17 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Clayton Penn wrote:
> I have attempted to register for the Debian Forums, but have not received a
> verification email

Did you try wether your new account is already working ?
(Sorry, i'm not familiar with the current registration procedure.)

If not:
There seems to be some problem with GMail:

  https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=158230

Are you perhaps directly or indirectly using GMail ?

> Do you happen to have another email address contact?

I have an account at forums.debian.net, although not used in years.
So if you want to add information to above topic, i could try to do so
on your behalf.

But first consider to try registering with a completely different mail
provider which is surely not using GMail's software.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: "I: update-initramfs is disabled (live system is running on read-only media)" ...

2024-02-16 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Albretch Mueller wrote:
> > How can you update the initramfs on read-only media?

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> You can't. Initramfs resides in the boot medium. To update it,
> you have to write to said medium.

One will have to create a new read-only medium.

In case the original is a Debian Live ISO:

One would have to extract the initramfs file out of the ISO. If its name
is not known, then the boot loader configuration file should tell. Like
in /boot/grub/grub.cfg of debian-live-12.0.0-amd64-standard.iso:
   initrd  /live/initrd.img-6.1.0-9-amd64
or in its /isolinux/live.cfg:
   initrd /live/initrd.img

Next one would modify the extracted initramfs.
(This is an adventure on its own. Other will know more about it than me.)

Finally one would pack up a new ISO, taking all files from the old ISO but
replacing the initramfs file by the modified one from hard disk.
Roughly like in

https://wiki.debian.org/RepackBootableISO#In_xorriso_load_ISO_tree_and_write_modified_new_ISO

Details could be determined when the name of ISO and initramfs file is
known. If it's about DVD media, it would be interesting to learn about
the DVD drives at the computer which shall do the modification.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:
> Next experiment is a pair of 4T Silicon Power SSD's

When f3 has (hopefully) given its OK, the topic of a full write-and-read
test will come up again. I'm looking forward to all the spin-off topics.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Heh.  Don't forget your own attempts to use a shredder as a PRNG stream.

My original idea was to watch a minimal shred run by teeing its work into
a checksummer.

But then topic drift came in. So we got a farm show of random generators
and a discussion about what exactly is a bug in shred's documentation.
Plus the shell programming webinar. And a diagnosis about a rightously
failed attempt to change the partition table type from MBR/DOS to GPT.

And this all because Gene Heskett was adventurous enough to buy a cheap
fake USB disk.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Let me write out the example again, but with the bug fixed, and then
> explain what each line does, [... lecture about advanced shell
> programming ...]

And this all because Gene Heskett was adventurous enough to buy a cheap
fake USB disk. :))


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

"info shred" says:
> > >   i=$(mktemp)
> > >   exec 3<>"$i"
> > >   rm -- "$i"
> > >   echo "Hello, world" >&3
> > >   shred - >&3
> > >   exec 3>-

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> In fact, that last line is
> written incorrectly.  It should say "exec 3>&-" and what that does
> is close file descriptor 3, which was previously opened on line 2.
> [...]
> This is an obvious bug in the info page.  I wonder how many years
> this has gone unnoticed.

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=155175#36
of 22 Dec 2005 states:

  "I'll assume that this is now adequately explained in the info page
   (below).  If not then please reopen.  // Thomas Hood
   [...]
   exec 3>-"

The bug report is from 02 Aug 2002 and states that the info page contains
the short and broad promise which we can still see in "man shred".

So we can assume a bug age of 18 to 22 years.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_is_a_file
> But, there is more than one kind of file.

"All files are equal.
 But some files are more equal than others."

(George Orwell in his dystopic novel "Server Farm".)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Combining Distro DVD's

Hi,

Steve Matzura wrote:
> I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media for
> a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course.

The initial situation will depend much on the distro ...
But given that Debian is about the last one i know with all its packages
in DVD images, i assume you mean the Debian installer ISO sets. Like
  https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/jigdo-dvd/

> I'd start by
> creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby ensuring
> the boot block and boot material is where it should be.

There is the dilemma that unpacking the first ISO into the USB stick's
filesystem will not enable the copied boot stuff, and that putting the
first ISO plainly onto the stick (e.g. by dd) will leave you with a
read-only filesystem on the stick.

So you'd need to invest some extra expertise.
Either for making a bootable USB stick with read-write filesystem from
the first ISO, or for merging the ISOs into a single ISO. In the former
case you need knowledge about booting Debian (by GRUB, i guess). In the
latter case you need xorriso.

> But then what do I
> do with the additional media? Surely there will be some files with the same
> name among the individual pieces of media, and some will probably contain
> the same info while others probably will not.

They should be either either merged or discarded, depending on their
meaning and on their importance for your final result. I.e. whether you
merged the ISOs or you extracted to a writable filesystem and installed
a bootloader yourself.

The way of merging multiple Debian DVD ISOs of the same release and
CPU architecture to a single ISO by xorriso is described in

  https://wiki.debian.org/MergeDebianIsos

(The script merge_debian_isos would also be the source to learn about
the proper handling of files with expected name collision.)

I leave it to others to elaborate the ways of creating a bootable USB
stick with writable filesystem and the content of Debian DVD 1 with
work-ready installer software. Then it's an adventure on its own to
add all the packages from the other DVD images and to properly care
for their non-package files.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: grub-pc error when upgrading from buster to bullseye

Hi,

John Boxall wrote:
> I am aware that the label and uuid (drive and partition) are replicated on
> the cloned drive, but I can't find the model number (in text format) stored
> anywhere on the drive.

Maybe the grub-pc package takes its configuration from a different drive
which is attached to the system ?

Somewhat wayward idea:
Does the initrd contain the inappropirate address ?
(I don't see much connection between initrd and grub-pc. But initrd is a
classic hideout for obsolete paths after modification of boot procedures.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: grub-pc error when upgrading from buster to bullseye

Hi,

John Boxall wrote:
>   Setting up grub-pc (2.06-3~deb11u6) ...
>   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WDS100T2B0A-00SM50_21185R801540 does not
> exist, so cannot grub-install to it!
> What is confusing to me is that the error indicates the source SDD even
> though I have updated the boot images and installed grub on the cloned HDD.

The disk/by-id file names are made up from hardware properties.
I believe to see in the name at least: Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number.

So you will have to find the configuration file which knows that
/dev/disk/by-id address and change it either to the new hardware id or
to a /dev/disk/by-uuid address, which refers to the cloned disk content.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

Hi,

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Still there's the discrepancy between doc and behaviour.

Depends at which documentation you look. Obviously stemming from
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=155175#36
i read in
  https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/shred-invocation.html

 "A file of ‘-’ denotes standard output. The intended use of this is to
  shred a removed temporary file. For example: [shell wizzardry]"

It works as long as stdout is connected to a data file, or block device,
or directory, or symbolic link, or to a character device that is not a
terminal.
(Maybe it refuses later on some of these types, but not at the location
with the message "invalid file type". I wonder if i can connect stdout
to a symbolic link instead of its target.)

The bug would thus have to be filed against the man page
  https://sources.debian.org/src/coreutils/9.4-3/man/shred.1/
which says only

  "If FILE is \-, shred standard output."

The info empire of coreutils says what above web manual says.
  https://sources.debian.org/src/coreutils/9.4-3/doc/coreutils.texi/#L10705


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug?

Hi,

debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:
> Maybe it is unstated but mandatory to use -n 1 as well?
> And optionally -s N?

Naw. It just doesn't want to work pipes.

Initially i tried with these options:

  shred -n 1 -s 1K -v - | sha256sum

as preparation for a proposal to Gene Heskett, like:
  shred -n 1 -s 204768K -v - | tee /dev/sdm1 | sha256sum

> I expect reading the code would tell.

My code analysis is in

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/1162291656137153...@scdbackup.webframe.org

to...@tuxteam.de found bug 155175 from 2002, which explains why. See
  https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/zcdxzya0ayrmp...@tuxteam.de

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Fast Random Data Generation

Hi,

Linux-Fan wrote:
> I wrote a program to automatically generate random bytes in multiple
> threads:
> https://masysma.net/32/big4.xhtml
> ...
> || Wrote 102400 MiB in 13 s @ 7812.023 MiB/s

That's impressive.

> Secure Random can be obtained from OpenSSL:
>
> | $ time for i in `seq 1 100`; do openssl rand -out /dev/null $((1024 * 1024 
> * 1024)); done
> |
> | real  0m49.288s
> | user  0m44.710s
> | sys   0m4.579s
> Effectively 2078 MiB/s (quite OK for single-threaded operation).

Probably the best choice for sceptics who critizise a reproducible random
stream or mistrust random people's aptness to produce random.
(If the number of desired loops gets larger, then one could do arithmetik
 in a "while" loop instead of "for" and "seq".)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Unidentified subject!

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> Concurrency:
> threads throughput
> 8   205+198+180+195+205+184+184+189=1,540 MB/s

There remains the question how to join these streams without losing speed
in order to produce a single checksum. (Or one would have to divide the
target into 8 areas which get checked separately.)

Does this 8 thread generator cause any problems with the usability of
the rest of the system ? Sluggish program behavior or so ?

The main reason to have my own low-quality implementation of a random
stream was that /dev/urandom was too slow for 12x speed (= 1.8 MB/s) CD-RW
media and that higher random quality still put too much load on a
single-core 600 MHz Pentium system. That was nearly 25 years ago.

I wrote:
> > Last time i tested /dev/urandom it was much slower on comparable machines
> > and also became slower as the amount grew.

> Did you figure out why the Linux random number subsystem slowed, and at what
> amount?

No. I cannot even remember when and why i had reason to compare it with
my own stream generator. Maybe 5 or 10 years ago. The throughput was
more than 100 times better.

I have to correct my previous measurement on the 4 GHz Xeon, which was
made with a debuggable version of the program that produced the stream.
The production binary which is compiled with -O2 can write 2500 MB/s into
a pipe with a pacifier program which counts the data:

  $ time $(scdbackup -where bin)/cd_backup_planer -write_random - 100g 
2s62gss463ar46492bni | $(scdbackup -where bin)/raedchen -step 100m -no_output 
-print_count
  100.0g bytes

  real0m39.884s
  user0m30.629s
  sys 0m41.013s

(One would have to install scdbackup to reproduce this and to see raedchen
 count the bytes while spinning the classic SunOS boot wheel: |/-\|/-\|/-\
   http://scdbackup.webframe.org/main_eng.html
   http://scdbackup.webframe.org/examples.html
 Oh nostalgy ...
)

Totally useless but yielding nearly 4000 MB/s:

  $ time $(scdbackup -where bin)/cd_backup_planer -write_random - 100g 
2s62gss463ar46492bni >/dev/null

  real0m27.064s
  user0m23.433s
  sys 0m3.646s

The main bottleneck in my proposal would be the checksummer:

  $ time $(scdbackup -where bin)/cd_backup_planer -write_random - 100g 
2s62gss463ar46492bni | md5sum
  5a6ba41c2c18423fa33355005445c183  -

  real2m8.160s
  user2m25.599s
  sys 0m22.663s

That's quite exactly 800 MiB/s ~= 6.7 Gbps.
Still good enough for vanilla USB-3 with a fast SSD, i'd say.

> TIMTOWTDI.  :-)

Looks like another example of a weak random stream. :))

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Unidentified subject!

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> $ time dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8K count=128K | wc -c
> [...]
> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 4.30652 s, 249 MB/s

This looks good enough for practical use on spinning rust and slow SSD.

Maybe the "wc" pipe slows it down ?
... not much on 4 GHz Xeon with Debian 11:

  $ time dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8K count=128K | wc -c
  ...
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 4.13074 s, 260 MB/s
  $ time dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8K count=128K of=/dev/null
  ...
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 3.95569 s, 271 MB/s

Last time i tested /dev/urandom it was much slower on comparable machines
and also became slower as the amount grew.

Therefore i still have my amateur RNG which works with a little bit of
MD5 and a lot of EXOR. It produces about 1100 MiB/s on the 4 GHz machine.
No cryptographical strength, but chaotic enough to avoid any systematic
pattern which could be recognized by a cheater and represented with
some high compression factor.
The original purpose was to avoid any systematic interference with the
encoding of data blocks on optical media.

I am sure there are faster RNGs around with better random quality.

> $ time perl -MMath::Random::ISAAC::XS -e 
> '$i=Math::Random::ISAAC::XS->new(12345678); print pack 'L',$i->irand while 1' 
> | dd bs=8K count=128K | wc -c
> 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 82.6523 s, 13.0 MB/s

Now that's merely sufficient for shredding the content of a BD-RE medium
or a slow USB stick.

> I suggest using /dev/urandom and tee(1) to write the same CSPRN
> stream to all of the devices and using cmp(1) to validate.

I'd propose to use a checksummer like md5sum or sha256sum instead of cmp:

 $random_generator | tee $target | $checksummer
 dd if=$target bs=... count=... | $checksummer

This way one can use unreproducible random streams and does not have to
store the whole stream on a reliable device for comparison.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Unidentified subject!

Hi,

i wrote:
> > In the other thread about the /dev/sdm test:
Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Creating file 39.h2w ... 1.98% -- 1.90 MB/s -- 257:11:32
> > > [...]
> > > $ sudo f3probe --destructive --time-ops /dev/sdm
> > > Bad news: The device `/dev/sdm' is a counterfeit of type limbo
> > > Device geometry:
> > >  *Usable* size: 59.15 GB (124050944 blocks)
> > > Announced size: 1.91 TB (409600 blocks)

David Christensen wrote:
> Which other thread?  Please provide a URL to archived post.

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/e7a0c1a1-f973-4007-a86d-8d91d8d91...@shentel.net
https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/b566504b-5677-4d84-b5b3-b0de63230...@shentel.net

> So, the 2 TB USB SSD's are really scam 64 GB devices?

The manufacturer would probably state that it's no intentional scam but
just poor product quality. (Exploiting Hanlon's Razor.)

It might be intentional that the write speed gets slower and slower as
the end of the usable area is approached. This avoids the need for
confessing the failure to the operating system.
But it might also be an honest attempt of the disk's firmware to find
some blocks which can take and give back the arriving data.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: -new HP AMD ryzen with realtec audio. The HP is mo1-F3xxx It has winblows 11 on it and I want it gone. It does have a 256GB SSD. Is there any thing i need to know before i try to install Bookworm

2024-02-10 Thread Maureen Thomas

 So can I please get some help.  I have a portable CD/DVD and I made a USB with 
a ISO on it.  The computer does not have a cd/dvd burner but I have a portable 
one.  Can some one tell me if there are any special things I need to do to put 
Debian 12 on this machine.  I really hate windows and need to get it gone.  
Your help is always appreciated by this old lady.  Thank you in advance>
On Friday, February 9, 2024 at 08:10:24 PM EST, Maureen Thomas 
 wrote:  
 
 
,, 1

Re: Unidentified subject!

Hi,

gene heskett wrote:
> my fading eyesight couldn't see
> the diffs between () and {} in a 6 point font.  I need a bigger, more
> legible font in t-bird.

That's why i propose to copy+paste problematic command lines.

Your mouse can read it, your mail client can send it, and we have
youngsters here of merely 60 years who will be glad to tell our
most senior regular why the lines don't work.

With some luck this creates nostalgic tangents about how the used features
evolved since the early 1980s.

In the other thread about the /dev/sdm test:
> Creating file 39.h2w ... 1.98% -- 1.90 MB/s -- 257:11:32
> but is taking a few bytes now and then.
> [...]
> $ ls -l
> total 40627044
> [...]
> $ sudo f3probe --destructive --time-ops /dev/sdm
> Bad news: The device `/dev/sdm' is a counterfeit of type limbo
> Device geometry:
> *Usable* size: 59.15 GB (124050944 blocks)
>Announced size: 1.91 TB (409600 blocks)

That's really barefaced.
How can the seller believe to get away with a problem which will show
already after a few dozen GB were written ?

> Probe time: 2.07s

That's indeed a quick diagnosis. Congrats to the developers of f3probe.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug?

Hi,

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Ah, it seems to be this one, from 2002:
>  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=155175

So it's not a bug but a feature. :(

I'm riddling over the code about the connection to an old graphics
algorithm (Bresenham's Algorithm) and how shred produces a random pattern
at all.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: shred bug?

Hi,

i wrote:
> >   shred: -: invalid file type

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Hmm. This looks like a genuine bug: the man page mentions it.

Even the help text in
  https://sources.debian.org/src/coreutils/9.4-3/src/shred.c/
says
  If FILE is -, shred standard output.

The name "-" is recognized in line 1257 and leads to a call of wipefd()
in line 958. The error messages there look different from above.
So i hop from line 973 to do_wipefd() and find the message in line 845.
fd is supposed to be 1 (= stdout). fstat(2) was successful but now this
condition snaps:

  if ((S_ISCHR (st.st_mode) && isatty (fd))
  || S_ISFIFO (st.st_mode)
  || S_ISSOCK (st.st_mode))

The problem seems to be in the S_ISFIFO part.
In a little test program fstat() reports about fd==1:
  st.st_mode= 010600 , S_ISFIFO(st.st_mode)= 1
(st_mode shown in octal as in man 2 fstat.)

It looks like the test expects a pipe(2) file descriptor to be
classified as S_ISCHR and !isatty().
Without redirection through a pipe, fd 1 has st.st_mode 20620, S_ISCHR,
and isatty()==1. The isatty() result is indeed a good reason, not to
flood stdout by a zillion random bytes.

Does anybody have an old GNU/Linux system where a file descriptor from
pipe(2) is classified as character device (S_IFCHR, S_ISCHR) ?

Does anybody have an idea why shred would want to exclude fifos ?
(What ciould shred do with a non-tty character device that cannot be done
 with a fifo ?)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Unidentified subject!

Hi,

Gene Heskett wrote:
> Is bash not actually bash these days? It is not doing for loops for me.

Come on Gene, be no sophie. Copy+paste your failing line here. :))


IIRC the for-loop in question writes several copies of the same file.
( https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/02/msg00318.html )
Others already pointed out that this invites for firmware scams like
deduplication or silent overwriting of older data.

I would vote for a filesystem killer like
  shred -n 1 -s 204768K -v - | tee /dev/sdm1 | sha256sum
  dd if=/dev/sdm1 bs=32K count=6399 skip=32 | sha256sum

But shred(1) on Debian 11 refuses on "-" contrary to its documentation:
  shred: -: invalid file type
A non-existing file path causes "No such file or directory".


The filesystem killer aspect could be removed by creating large data files
in the readily partitioned and formatted filesystems of the disk.
(Replace "/dev/sdm1" by "/where/mounted/random_test_file" and reduce the
 numbers 204768K and bs=32K count=6399 to what you expect to
 fit into the filesystem. Like 20K and bs=32K count=6250.
 Ask df for storage capacities.)

But there needs to be a fast pseudo-random byte stream (which shred would
provide if i could talk it into writing to stdout) which you can split
for the device and for sha256sum.
I have an own weak-random generator, but shred beats it by a factor of 10
when writing to /dev/null.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Generic Linux / clib question

2024-02-09 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > The readline library is released under the full GPL, not the LGPL.  If
> > you dynamically link it with a program, then you can only release that
> > program under terms compatible with the GPL.  This is an intentional
> > choice.

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Practically it doesn't change much, but for some lawyer at Intel it might.

A substantial problem can be that libreadline became "GPLv3 or later" a
few years ago and that GPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2-only (i.e. not
"or later"). The main reason is in the patent-fighting restrictions in
GPLv3, which would be forbidden extra restrictions under GPLv2.

So at best this causes "GPLv2 or later" programs to become "GPLv3 or later",
like the Debian binary of xorriso. At worst you would have a license clash
and would have to resort to e.g. libedit. (Not what the FSF would like.)

> The gist is that, if the user is the one doing the last linking step,
> all is fine. She's allowed anything.

She's allowed to use it but not to give it to others without obeying the
demands and restrictions of GPL.

Personally i would be ok with a more liberal use of my GPL'ed software.
But the official stance of the FSF is that the license applies on first
contact. In case of libreadline this would the line
  #include 
and as next occasion the preparations of the compiler and linker to employ
libreadline.so at run time.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

-new HP AMD ryzen with realtec audio. The HP is mo1-F3xxx It has winblows 11 on it and I want it gone. It does have a 256GB SSD. Is there any thing i need to know before i try to install Bookworm. Ca

2024-02-09 Thread Maureen Thomas


,, 1

Re: Generic Linux / clib question

2024-02-09 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Van Snyder wrote:
> Years ago, I knew the name of the routines one could use to have some stdin
> history and be able to edit it, like you can do in XTerm or gnuplot or 

Sounds like readline:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline
  https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/readline

An alternative with BSD license is libedit:
  https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libedit


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Things I don't touch with a 3.048m barge pole

2024-02-09 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

gene heskett wrote:
> GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9
>
> Partition table scan:
>   MBR: MBR only
> [...]
> Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format
> in memory.
> [...]
> Warning! Secondary partition table overlaps the last partition by 33 blocks!
> You will need to delete this partition or resize it in another utility.
> [...]
> Disk /dev/sdm: 409600 sectors, 1.9 TiB
> Number  Start (sector)End (sector)  Size   Code  Name
>1  64  409599   1.9 TiB 0700  Microsoft basic data

It wants to say "found no GPT at all and cannot easily convert the MBR
partition table".

> What do we make of that?  Some sort of NTFS?

NTFS would be a possible candidate for the filesystem inside the
partition. What does this command report:

  file -s /dev/sdm1

But the complaint from gdisk is just about an MBR partitioned stick with
no unclaimed room at the end for storing the GPT backup table.
Indeed if you want to convert the MBR partition table to GPT you will have
to delete or shrink the single partition number 1. (Shrinking would
of course depend on what kind of filesystem is in the partition and
whether Debian has shrink software for it.)
The same will be necessary if you want more than one partition.

Whatever, there is nothing suspicious about the gdisk behavior with that
particular disk.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: How can we change the keyboard layout?

2024-02-06 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Loris Bennett wrote:
> As many have pointed out, it is short for 'Steuerung', but I have met
> many Germans who refer to this key as 'String'.  I am not sure why

BASIC ?

Or the popular bundle theory:
[Strg] (= [Ctrl]) means "String",
[AltGr] (= right side [Alt]) means "Altgriechisch" (= ancient greek),
[Entf] (= [Delete]) means "Entfetten" (= degrease).

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: about 64bits time_t transition and deborphan

2024-02-06 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Patrice Duroux wrote:
> Out of curiosity, I started this transition on some packages from
> experimental and I observed that deborphan is not without
> «disruption».
> [...]
> Is this something to be reported to deborphan as it could also be in
> some other cases than this time_t transition? or wait and see... ;-)

I guess "wait and see" for now.

The whole operation seems to be still in progress and leaves traces
in the package tracker. See e.g. section "testing migrations" in
  https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libisoburn

The associated mailing list got notifications as bug reports 1062380 for
libisoburn and 1062381 for libisofs on february 1st. Yesterday came
bug report 1063123 for libburn.
I am curious how this will unfold further. Especially whether the new
binary package name "libisoburn1t64" will persist for future releases.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: install Kernel and GRUB in chroot.

2024-02-02 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Dmitry wrote:
> Yep. `dd` copy partitions table. Amazing.

Not so amazing after you realize that a partition table is just data on
the storage medium and not some special property of the storage device.
dd copies data. If these data contain a partition table and get copied to
the right place on the storage medium, the partition table will be
recognized by EFI and Linux.

> applies no 'intelligence' to the operation.

This describes it very well. Sometimes dumb is good. Sometimes not.

Initially you stated in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/02/msg8.html
>...> I need to prepare that system for booting.
>...> 1. Install Kernel.
>...> 2. Install GRUB and Configure.
>...> 3. Add changes to UEFI to start booting.

dd-ing a bootable Debian ISO will not do what you describe.
Assumed the ISO is prepared for booting from USB stick, you will get a
bootable Live or an installer system. At least ISOs for i386, amd64, and
arm64 should be prepared for that.

If it is not ready for booting from USB stick, it will be just a storage
with a mountable filesystem and Debian files in it.

Max Nikulin wrote:
> > Just copy files from LiveCD (it should have EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi)
> > to the ESP partition on the USB stick.

The /EFI/boot directory of a bootable Debian ISO usually does not contain
the full GRUB equipment for EFI. Important parts of an amd64 Live ISO are
in /boot/grub.
The programs in /EFI/boot are specialized on convincing Secure Boot and
on finding the ISO filesystem with /boot/grub in it. (Actually those are
copies of the EFI boot partition files. The boot partition is a FAT
filesystem image file inside the ISO named /boot/grub/efi.img .)

Tim Woodall wrote:
> > I'm not exactly sure what you're doing.

I join this statement. :))

Do you want a normal changeable Debian system installation or do you want
a Live system with its immutable core and maybe some partition where you
can store files ?
(Just curiosity of mine. Possibly i could not help much with chroot
questions anyway.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: AW: AW: su su- sudo dont work

2024-01-27 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Andy Smith wrote:
> It is hard to understand how what Michael/Sophie/Tobias does can in
> any way be "fun" for them, though maybe that is just our lack of
> understanding.

I expressed my suspicion of a "Hurz" performance in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2023/05/msg00100.html


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Automatically installing GRUB on multiple drives

2024-01-26 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Nicolas George wrote:
> You seem to be assuming that the system will first check sector 0 to
> parse the MBR and then, if the MBR declares a GPT sector try to use the
> GPT.

That's what the UEFI specs prescribe. GPT is defined by UEFI-2.8 in
chapter 5 "GUID Partition Table (GPT) Disk Layout". Especially:

  5.2.3 Protective MBR
  For a bootable disk, a Protective MBR must be located at LBA 0 (i.e.,
  the first logical block) of the disk if it is using the GPT disk layout.
  The Protective MBR precedes the GUID Partition Table Header to maintain
  compatibility with existing tools that do not understand GPT partition
  structures.

> I think it is the other way around on modern systems: it will first
> check sector 1 for a GPT header, and only if it fails check sector 0.

Given the creativity of firmware programmers, this is not impossible.
At least the programmers of older versions of OVMF took the presence of
a GPT header as reason to boot, whereas without it did not boot.
Meanwhile this demand for GPT debris has vanished and OVMF boots from
media with only MBR partitions, too.

I wrote:
> > This layout [used by Debian installation ISOs] was invented by Matthew
> > J. Garrett for Fedora

> I think I invented independently something similar.
> https://www.normalesup.org/~george/comp/live_iso_usb/grub_hybrid.html

Not to forget Vladimir Serbinenko who specified how a grub-mkrescue ISO
shall present its lures for BIOS and EFI on optical media and USB stick.
The ISO has a pure GPT partition table, where the ISO filesystem is not
mountable as partition but only by the base device (like /dev/sdc) or
possibly by its HFS+ directory tree via the Apple Partition Map, if
present.

(To create such an ISO, install grub-common, grub-efi-amd64, grub-efi-ia32,
and grub-pc. Then run grub-mkrescue with some dummy directory as payload.
The ISO will boot to a GRUB prompt.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Automatically installing GRUB on multiple drives

2024-01-26 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

i hate to put in question the benefit of my proposal, but:

Nicolas George wrote:
> The firmware would never write in parts of the
> drive that might contain data.

See

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1056998
  "cdrom: Installation media changes after booting it"

Two occasions were shown in this bug where the EFI system partition of
a Debian installation ISO on USB stick changed. One was caused by a
Microsoft operating system, writing a file named WPSettings.dat. But the
other was from Lenovo firmware writing /efi/Lenovo/BIOS/SelfHealing.fd .

One may doubt that the success of these operations is desirable at all.
The ISO was also tested with a not-anymore-writable DVD. In that case the
Lenovo firmware did not raise protest over the fact that it was not
possible to write to the EFI partition.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Changing The PSI Definition

2024-01-25 Thread Thomas George


The current PSI works perfectly but I don't like the pale green prompt.

Tried editing .bashrd , /ext/fprofile and /ext/bash.bashrc but no 
changes to the PSI definition had any effect


Searched for PSI and found

/usr/src/linux-headers-6.1.0-16-amd64/include/config/PSI
/usr/src/linux-headers-6.1.0-17-amd64/include/config/PSI

Is the definition of PSI baked in?

If so, I can live with it the way it is.

Tom George

Re: Automatically installing GRUB on multiple drives

2024-01-24 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Nicolas George wrote:
> Interesting. Indeed, “table-length: 4” causes sfdisk to only write 3
> sectors at the beginning and 2 at the end. I checked it really does not
> write elsewhere.
> That makes it possible to use full-disk RAID on a UEFI boot drive. Very
> good news.

\o/

(Nearly as good as Stefan Monnier's crystal ball. And that without
understanding the dirty details which cause the need for a small partition
table.)

> More and more firmwares will only boot with GPT. I think I met
> only once a firmware that booted UEFI, 32 bits, with a MBR

The Debian installation and live ISOs have MBR partitions with only a
flimsy echo of GPT. There is a GPT header block and an entries array.
But it does not get announced by a Protective MBR. Rather they have two
partitions of which one is meant to be invisible to EFI ("Empty") and
one is advertised as EFI partition:

$ /sbin/fdisk -l debian-12.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso
...
Disklabel type: dos
...
Device   Boot Start End Sectors  Size Id Type
debian-12.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso1 *0 1286143 1286144  628M  0 Empty
debian-12.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso2   4476   23451   18976  9.3M ef EFI (FAT-12

So any system which boots this ISO from USB stick does not rely on
the presence of a valid GPT.
(The only particular example of GPT addiction i know of are old versions
of OVMF, the EFI used by qemu, which wanted to see the GPT header block,
even without Protective MBR.)

This layout was invented by Matthew J. Garrett for Fedora and is still
the most bootable of all possible weird ways to present boot stuff for
legacy BIOS and EFI on USB stick in the same image. (There are mad legacy
BIOSes which hate EFI's demand for no MBR boot flag. Several distros
abandoned above layout in favor of plain MBR or plain GPT. The price
is that they have to leave behind some of the existing machines.)

> GPT
>  ├─EFI
>  └─RAID
> └─LVM (of course)
>
> Now, thanks to you, I know I can do:
>
> GPT
>  ┊  RAID
>  └───┤
>  ├─EFI
>  └─LVM

Ah. Now i understand how accidentially useful my technical nitpicking was.
(A consequence of me playing Dr. Pol with the arm in the ISO 9660 cow
up to my shoulder.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Automatically installing GRUB on multiple drives

2024-01-24 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

i cannot make qualified proposals for the GRUB question, but stumble over
your technical statements.

Nicolas George wrote:
> Since mdadm can only put its superblock at the end of the device (1.0),
> at the beginning of the device (1.1) and 4 Ko from the beginning (1.2),
> but they still have not invented 1.3 to have the metadata 17 Ko from the
> beginning or the end, which would be necessary to be compatible with
> GPT,

Although it would be unusually small, it is possible to have a GPT of
only 4 KiB of size:
- 512 bytes for Protective MBR (the magic number of GPT)
- 512 bytes for the GPT header block
- 3 KiB for an array of 24 partition entries.

Question is of course, whether any partition editor is willing to create
such a small GPT. The internet says that sfdisk has "table-length" among
its input "Header lines". So it would be a matter of learning and
experimenting.
(Possibly i would be faster with writing the first header blocks by
hand, following UEFI specs or my cheat sheet in libisofs.)

> we have to partition them and put the EFI system partition outside
> them.

Do you mean you partition them DOS-style ?
If so, then a partition of type 0xEF could be used as system partition.
Probably any partition type will do, because EFI is very eager to look
into any partition with FAT filesystem.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: Looking for archive management system for backups burned to optical discs

2024-01-23 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> I have a SOHO file server with ~1 TB of data.  I would like archive the data
> by burning it to a series of optical discs organized by time (e.g. mtime).
> I expect to periodically burn additional discs in the future, each covering
> a span of time from the previous last disc to the then-current time.

I use my own software for making incremental multi-volume backups, based
on file timestamps (m and c), inode numbers, and content checksums.
  http://scdbackup.webframe.org/main_eng.html
  http://scdbackup.webframe.org/examples.html#incremental

The software and the texts are quite old. The proposed backup scheme
is not in use here any more.
Instead i have four independent backup families, each comprised of
level 0 to N with no repetitions below the current level N.
Further i have backups of the configuration and memorized file lists
on 4 CDs.

Level 0 fills dozens of BD-RE discs. The other levels fill at most one
BD-RE. Level N of each family exists in three copies which get larger
with each backup run of that level. Whenever this level BD threatens to
overflow, i archive the latest BD of that level and start level N+1.
That step is a bit bumpy, because i have to restore the file lists of
level N from CD after a backup has been planned but was not performed.
When overflow is foreseeable, i make a copy of the file lists on disk
before i start the planning run, or i simply start level N+1 without
waiting for the overflow.

I use scdbackup for the slowly growing bulk of my file collection.
The agile parts of my hard disk are only about 5 GB and get covered by
incremental multi-session backups of xorriso (which learned a lot about
incrementality from scdbackup). With zisofs compression i can put about
30 incremental backups of one DVD+RW or 250 backups on one BD-RE.
Day by day.

> The term "archive management system" comes to mind.

I would not attribute this title to scdbackup. It was created to scratch
my itch when hard disks grew much faster in capacity than the backup
media. (Also it was the motivation to start programming on ISO 9660
producers and burn programs.)

So it might be that you are better off with a more professional backup
system. :))

(Else we will probably have to read together
  http://scdbackup.webframe.org/cd_backup_planer_help
and my backup configurations to compose configurations for you.)

--
About timestamps and incremental backup:

If you only go for mtime, them you miss changes of file attributes
which are indicated by ctime.
Even more, timestamps alone are not a reliable way to determine which
files are new at their current location in the directory tree.
If you move a file from one directory to the other, then the timestamps
of the file do _not_ get updated. Only the two involved directories get
new timestamps.
So when the backup tool encounters directories with young timestamps
it has to use other means to determine whether their data files were
moved. scdbackup uses recorded device and inode numbers, and as last
resort recorded MD5 sums for that purpose.

(Of course, content MD5 comparison is slow and causes high disk load,
compared to simple directory tree traversal with timestamps and inode
numbers. So scdbackup tries to avoid this when possible and allowed
by the -changetest_options in the backup configuration file.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: OT: Is there any size limit for ISO's?

2024-01-22 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

Hans wrote:
> does anyone know, if there is a limit of the size an iso may have?

With xorriso: 4 TiB = 4096 GiB.

An ISO 9660 filesystem may have 2 exp 32 data blocks. The usual block
size is 2 exp 11 = 2048 bytes. That would be 2 exp 43 = 8 TiB in total.
But xorriso uses libburn for writing and a poor design decision of
about 20 years ago lets it use signed int for block addresses.
So only 2 exp 31 blocks = 4 TiB are possible with libburn and xorriso.

> Background: I have a selfmade lifefile iso image, which was created by
> bootcdwrite. The size of the imagefile is about 32GB.

Looks like bootcd uses genisoimage for producing the ISO,
(https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/b/bootcd/control-6.7)

Anyways, 32 GB of size should not be a problem.

> When the stick is booting, first appear the usual text messages,

Can you determine the origin of the last visible messages ?
BIOS/EFI ?
Boot loader (GRUB or ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX) ?
Linux ?
Debian installation software ?

> but then the screen goes blank and the further boot hangs.
> However, when I am booting this file (this iso-image) with Virtualbox,
> everything is working well.

Is Virtualbox using the same BIOS type as the real machine ?
I mean EFI versus Legacy BIOS aka CSM mode.

> Note: In earlier times I had a smaller image (about 8 GB), which booted
> perfectly.

Is the USB stick large enough for the image ?

Can dd read the whole image back from the USB stick ?

  # Set variable blocks to image file size divided by 2048
  blocks=...
  # Set variable stick to device file address of the USB stick
  stick=...

  dd if="$stick" bs=2048 count="$blocks" | md5sum

If no i/o error is reported by dd, compute the MD5 sum of the image file
and compare both.

> So I believe, the size of the image is, what matters. But maybe I am wrong.

It's not impossible. Especially if the stick hardware has problems.
But depending on the origin of the last visible message there is also
a chance that boot loader or Linux derail because of buggy file content
in the elsewise healthy ISO.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: top bar the way I want it

2024-01-20 Thread Maureen L Thomas

The package that held the chanages I wanted was called Extension Manager 
and Extensions.  That file gave me options for the top bar and the 
bottom bar.  Hope this helps.


On 1/20/24 1:46 AM, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/19/24 21:53, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
I am using Gnome, and I found the stuff I needed to get my desktop 
the way I wanted it.  I am very happy about it.  Now I just have to 
put NordVPN to connect with my browser.  Thank you for the help, it 
is greatly appreciated.



I am glad it worked out for you.  :-)


Part of participating in an Internet mailing list like debian-user is 
posting the solution to your question, so that other people can 
benefit.  Please document your solution.



David

Re: top bar the way I want it

2024-01-19 Thread Maureen L Thomas

I am using Gnome, and I found the stuff I needed to get my desktop the 
way I wanted it.  I am very happy about it.  Now I just have to put 
NordVPN to connect with my browser.  Thank you for the help, it is 
greatly appreciated.


On 1/19/24 7:17 AM, Joe wrote:

  On 1/18/24 1:17 AM, Beyond Insulted wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:30PM -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

 I now have a system that works but I cannot find any
utility to fix the top bar the way I want it.  Any hints?

Try to understand the audience that is being asked.

Imaging that they were willing to help and stopped doing so
because the "the way I want it" is a way too poor description.

 

Moe

Groeten
Geert Stappers

On Thu, 18 Jan 2024 23:02:21 -0500
Maureen L Thomas  wrote:


I am sorry for the way I said that.  What I want is the very top bar,
before I re-installed it had three topics on the very top left hand
that allowed me to click on one of them and get a menu of all the
software installed and in order according to the topic.  Like under
internet would list all the internet software. Right now I have to
use that dot thing to see what is installed. It is a pain.  I cannot
find the utility to change the settings for the top bar or the bottom
bar or the sidebar I used daily with a list of the browsers, and
special software that is used daily. Again I apologize for the
previous, I was very uptight over my inability to remember what I
need to do.


We cannot all recollect all that has gone before.

There is very large flexibility as to the Linux display. There are four
major desktop environments and several derivatives of them. Some people
don't use a DE at all, just a window manager.

I use Xfce4 and its own panels, with one panel to the top left and one
panel top right, with a third tiny panel just containing an analogue
clock.

Most configuration can be achieved by right-clicking on a panel then
Panel-> Panel Preferences. The size, position and number of panels can
be controlled in that way. Launchers can be added to panels, and
applications can be added to launchers. Mostly one launcher contains
one application.

I don't know what display configuration you have, but a good start is
to right-click on whatever bars you have, and explore the menus.

The main application menu can pretty much always be opened by
right-clicking on an empty part of the desktop and choosing
Applications. This set of menus, grouped as you say be approximate
function, can be edited by a couple of applications, one of which is the
Gnome alacarte, which I use. This is not normally installed by default
on Debian, but can be installed in the usual way. If you don't already
have Gnome or some of its applications, it will probably bring in a
distressing list of dependencies.

Let us know more about what desktop environment you use, and we can
probably give better advice. Unfortunately, while reinstalling can fix
many problems fairly easily, it does bring with it the need to rebuild
the configurations of many things.

Re: counting commas

Hi,

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> unicorn:~$ string="apple,banana,cherry,date"
> unicorn:~$ commas=${string//[!,]/}
> unicorn:~$ echo "${#commas}"
> 3

Always astonishing what a good bashism can do.

> But at this point, we have to wonder what the *actual* goal is.

Up to now we only know about the astonishment of fxkl4...@protonmail.com
that grep -c does not count characters.

For a more complicated use case i would write a little C program where
i'd be in control of every single bit of throughput.
(Ok, C causes scars on the programmer's self esteem. But what does not
kill me makes me just stronger. I'm a vim user.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

Hi,

Anssi Saari
> It does seem strange to me, even in MS-DOS era I was able to set a
> terminal scrollback to 5000 lines without issue, when RAM was maybe 4 MB
> and a DOS terminal program probably had access to way less than that.

I have no problems with 130 xterms of 10,000 lines each.


> So does rsync really generate gigabytes of verbose output?

rsync can be extremely verbose when the number of transferred files is
very high.


> Or is xfce-terminal storing the scrollback in a very inefficient way?

I would not be astonished to learn that the luxury ornamented terminals
of the various desktops waste many extra bytes when memorizing plain text.
But the real bug is the fact that the scroll back memory is unlimited and
can summon the OOM killer. (I imagine it like the Discworld Death of Rats.)

If i were a user of Xfce i would report this as bug to its Debian
maintainer. Bug title "xfce-terminal: A landmine on the kids' playground".


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: normally start new xterms

Hi,

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > > I coopted the otherwise useless "Windows" key (aka "Left Super" for
> > > WM things: Super-L makes an xterm:
> > >  # Terminal
> > >  Key   "t"   A   4  Exec exec xterm

i wrote:
> > For me the Flying Windows keys pop up or push down the affected window:
> >   Key Super_L A N RaiseLower
> >   Key Super_R A N RaiseLower
> > What i don't understand in your example is the Keyname "t".

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> It's Modifier (that Flying Window thing), aka "4" and the regular "t"
> (my mnemonics: "terminal").

Ah. You use it as modifier for other keys, i use it as plain key.
The quotation marks around "t" are only ornamental ?


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: counting commas

Hi,

fxkl4...@protonmail.com wrote:
> why doesn't grep count 2 commas
> echo 'Kích thước máy xay cỏ, giá máy thế nào , phụ tùng máy mua ở đâu' |
> grep -c ,
> 1

Happens with much simpler text too:
  $ echo ',,,' | grep -c ','
  1

The man page explains it:

 -c, --count
Suppress  normal output; instead print a count of matching lines
for each input file.  With the -v,  --invert-match  option  (see
below), count non-matching lines.  (-c is specified by POSIX.)

Note that it counts lines, not characters.

Counting characters by grep seems somewhat tricky:
  
https://www.unix.com/shell-programming-and-scripting/128033-grep-command-count-characters.html

An answer to this question
  
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16679369/count-occurrences-of-a-char-in-a-string-using-bash
proposes
echo "referee" | tr -cd 'e' | wc -c

  $ echo ',,,' | tr -cd ',' | wc -c
  3
  $ echo 'Kích thước máy xay cỏ, giá máy thế nào , phụ tùng máy mua ở đâu' | tr 
-cd ',' | wc -c
  2

(I hope i did not quote something that's against the code of conduct. :))


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: normally start new xterms

Hi,

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> I coopted the otherwise useless "Windows" key (aka "Left Super" for
> WM things: Super-L makes an xterm:
>  # Terminal
>  Key   "t"   A   4  Exec exec xterm

For me the Flying Windows keys pop up or push down the affected window:

  Key Super_L A N RaiseLower
  Key Super_R A N RaiseLower

What i don't understand in your example is the Keyname "t".
man fvwm points me to /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h or
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB (which seems not exist in Debian except
a file "XKeysymDB" of ipackage "xemacs21-support").

Do you know documentation which describes your "t" ?

(I see in my configuration that in the past i bound a pseudo-key F34 to
keycodes 115 and 116 by xmodmap(1) and used the Keyname F34 with fvwm
command "Key". After some system change i had to google and learned that
"Super_L" and "Super_R" work without help of xmodmap.)

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: no sound

2024-01-18 Thread Maureen L Thomas

I had a1T drive that has my backup on it.  I used Lucky Backup but I 
cannot figure out how to restore.  I read the book and it is confusing.  
I can't just more them over from that HD to the one that is in the 
computer because they are locked.  I will be dragging all future backups 
as you have said.  So much easier. Thank You


On 1/19/24 12:34 AM, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/18/24 20:08, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
I answered all your questions.  I believe I am using wayland.  I 
appreciate your help.;



YW.  :-)



On 1/18/24 1:12 AM, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 17:40, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
Well I did a back-up, that didn't work, but I didn't know it at the 
time, 


The back up failed?  :-(

Do you need help with data recovery? 

>

Too late for that.



Ouch.


Please get started doing some kind of backups.  Simple approaches 
include:


1.  Connect a USB drive (flash, HDD, SSD, whatever).  Hopefully, the 
desktop environment will display a pop-up dialog with to mount the USB 
drive file system and display it in a file manager.  Then open another 
file manager.  Drag and drop files from your hard disk drive or solid 
state drive to the USB drive to back up.  Drag them the other way to 
restore.  It helps to create folders with year, month, day-of-month 
names (e.g. 20240118) on the USB drive, so that you can back up the 
same file repeatedly and retain older copies.  Then put the USB drive 
off-site, get another USB drive, and continue with backups.  Every 
month or so, swap the on-site and off-site USB drives.


2.  If your computer has a CD/DVD/BD burner drive, buy a spindle of 
blank discs.  Look for a CD/DVD/BD burner application via your Start 
menu (or whatever it is called).  Burn important files to an optical 
disc periodically, and as needed.  Keep the burned discs off-site.



Another useful strategy is to put your operating system on one HDD/SSD 
and put your data on a second HDD/SSD.  When you need to re-install 
your operating system, you can shut down, disconnect the data drive 
SATA cable, boot installer media, and install the operating system.  
When the new operating system is working, you shutdown, connect the 
data disk SATA cable, boot, and configure the system to mount the data 
drive.



Did you install a graphical desktop?  If so, which one? 


I installed Gnome for the desk top



Okay.



What backport package(s) did you require?


deb https://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports contrib main 
non-free non-free-firmware



Okay.


I now have a system that works but I cannot find any utility to fix 
the top bar the way I want it. Any hints?


If you are using Xfce, right click on a blank area of any panel and 
choose Panel -> Panel Preferences.  This will give you a multi-tab 
app that you can use to customize all the panels.



I use Xfce and am unfamiliar with Gnome.  Perhaps another reader who 
uses the Gnome desktop can provide instructions for customizing the 
desktop interface.



David

Re: no sound

2024-01-18 Thread Maureen L Thomas

I answered all your questions.  I believe I am using wayland.  I 
appreciate your help.;


On 1/18/24 1:12 AM, David Christensen wrote:

On 1/17/24 17:40, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
Well I did a back-up, that didn't work, but I didn't know it at the 
time, 



The back up failed?  :-(


Do you need help with data recovery?   Too late for that.


and did a reinstallation from scratch. 



Did you install using debian-12.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso?


Did you install a graphical desktop?  If so, which one?  I installed 
Gnome for the desk top



I now have my sound back 



Good.  :-)


after I added back ports to my repositories. 



Do you mean backports?

https://backports.debian.org/





What backport package(s) did you require? deb 
https://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports contrib main 
non-free non-free-firmware



I now have a system that works but I cannot find any utility to fix 
the top bar the way I want it. Any hints?



If you are using Xfce, right click on a blank area of any panel and 
choose Panel -> Panel Preferences.  This will give you a multi-tab app 
that you can use to customize all the panels.



David

Re: top bar the way I want it

2024-01-18 Thread Maureen L Thomas

I am sorry for the way I said that.  What I want is the very top bar, 
before I re-installed it had three topics on the very top left hand that 
allowed me to click on one of them and get a menu of all the software 
installed and in order according to the topic.  Like under internet 
would list all the internet software. Right now I have to use that dot 
thing to see what is installed. It is a pain.  I cannot find the utility 
to change the settings for the top bar or the bottom bar or the sidebar 
I used daily with a list of the browsers, and special software that is 
used daily. Again I apologize for the previous, I was very uptight over 
my inability to remember what I need to do.


On 1/18/24 1:17 AM, Beyond Insulted wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:30PM -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

    I now have a system that works but I cannot find any utility
to fix the top bar the way I want it.  Any hints?

Try to understand the audience that is being asked.

Imaging that they were willing to help and stopped doing so
because the "the way I want it" is a way too poor description.

  

Moe


Groeten
Geert Stappers

SOLVED Re: No Release file for Security Update SOLVED

  The following sources.list which I copied from 
wiki.debian.org/SourcesList works perfectly for me


deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free


deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free


deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
main non-free-firmware contrib non-free


Thanks to the many responders who coached me through my rambling, 
incoherent path to this solution.


My apologies to the many responders who I misled with dumb entries.

I hope this ends the search for all.

Tom George

On 1/18/24 13:06, John Hasler wrote:

Tixy writes:

Where could your machine be getting this IP address from?  It's the
same IP address shown in your output when you used the incorrect
address 'ftp.security.debian.org' and for me that doesn't resolve to
any IP address.

>From here both security.debian.org and ftp.security.debian.org resolve
to 57.128.81.193.  Happens both with Unbound and with 8.8.8.8.

toncho/~ 22 dig  ftp.security-debian.org

; <<>> DiG 9.19.19-1-Debian <<>> ftp.security-debian.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2686
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ftp.security-debian.org.   IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ftp.security-debian.org. 3296   IN  CNAME   security-debian.org.
security-debian.org.3089IN  A   57.128.81.193

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Thu Jan 18 12:03:08 CST 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 101

toncho/~ 22 dig @8.8.8.8 ftp.security-debian.org

; <<>> DiG 9.19.19-1-Debian <<>> @8.8.8.8 ftp.security-debian.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 42376
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ftp.security-debian.org.   IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ftp.security-debian.org. 3600   IN  CNAME   security-debian.org.
security-debian.org.3600IN  A   57.128.81.193

;; Query time: 308 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Thu Jan 18 12:03:42 CST 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 82

toncho/~ 22 dig @8.8.8.8 security-debian.org

; <<>> DiG 9.19.19-1-Debian <<>> @8.8.8.8 security-debian.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 13855
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;security-debian.org.   IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
security-debian.org.3600IN  A   57.128.81.193

;; Query time: 284 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Thu Jan 18 12:05:00 CST 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 64

Re: normally start new xterms

2024-01-18 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

i wrote:
> > *FvwmButtons xterm_ts5 linuxterm.xpm Exec xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg 
> > wheat -fg black -sl 1 +sb

John Conover wrote:
>
>Action 'Exec exec xterm ...'

The framework of this line probably stems from a SuSE Linux of 1999.
It still works with the fvwm of Debian 11.

I now read man 1 FvwmButtons. All applicable descriptions and examples
demand the keyword "Action".

The "exec" before "xterm" is used in some examples of the man page and
mentioned already in my S.R.Bourne of 1983 (without "xterm", of course).
As reasoning i found

https://www.fvwm.org/Wiki/Tips/FvwmStartup/#33-use-exec-exec-to-prevent-unnecessary-dead-shell-processes
I have 63 such processes lingering around. But there are 131 xterms.
Many of them have process 1 as parent. Probably they stem from a script
which i use to populate the 8 "desktops" by a handful of xterms when the
system comes up.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: normally start new xterms

2024-01-18 Thread Thomas Schmitt

Hi,

i wrote:
> >xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg wheat -fg black -sl 1 +sb &

Max Nikulin wrote:
> Options may be put into ~/.Xresources
> xterm*vt100.saveLines: 1
> xterm*VT100.background: wheat
> xterm*VT100.foreground: black

I have it in ~/.fvwm2rc as:

*FvwmButtons xterm_ts5 linuxterm.xpm Exec xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg wheat 
-fg black -sl 1 +sb

This causes a button in the button box which creates a new xterm when
clicked.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: No Release file for Security Update SOLVED


  New sources.list file works perfectly

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free


deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free


deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
main non-free-firmware contrib non-free


Tom George


Thomas George wrote:
My system is Bookworm installed from the first DVD which was 
downloaded with the checksums and successfully checked.


I commented out the dvd and added to sources.list lines for bookworm, 
bookworm-updates and bookworm-security.


Ran apt-get update

The result was  bookworm InRelease, bookworm-updates InRelease, 
bookworm-secutity Relesse 404 Not Found [IP: 146.75.30.132 80]


Reading package lists Done

bookwoom-security Release does not have a Release file.

How do I fix this?

Re: No Release file for Security Update




On 1/17/24 22:54, Todd Zullinger wrote:

Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:58PM -0500, Thomas George wrote:

deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
non-free non-free-firmware

Stop guessing, and *read* what you were told to use.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00778.html

 Your source is incorrect. The security repo is at
 "http://security.debian.org/debian-security;;.

There are other lines that also work, but you can't just guess randomly
until you stumble across one.  Read a trusted source, and copy what
they tell you to use.  Don't put "ftp." in front of things that don't
need it.

https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList is also a good resource
with numerous examples.

Yes thank you. I have copied all the lines from the wiki example and 
they all work perfectly.  This is my new sources.list file


deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware 
contrib non-free


deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free


deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main 
non-free-firmware contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
main non-free-firmware contrib non-free

Re: No Release file for Security Update




On 1/17/24 20:52, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:40:58PM -0500, Thomas George wrote:

deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
non-free non-free-firmware

Stop guessing, and *read* what you were told to use.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00778.html

 Your source is incorrect. The security repo is at
 "http://security.debian.org/debian-security;;.

There are other lines that also work, but you can't just guess randomly
until you stumble across one.  Read a trusted source, and copy what
they tell you to use.  Don't put "ftp." in front of things that don't
need it.
I typed the above line exactly. apt-get update searches for 
security.debian.org:80 [57.128.81.193] and times out, no connection

update of bookworm-security failed Formerly Re: No Release file for Security Update




On 1/17/24 20:40, Thomas George wrote:


On 1/17/24 19:05, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:31:52AM -0500, Thomas George wrote:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware

This one, before you commented it out, only contained non-free-firmware
and *not* non-free.  They are two different sections.

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free 
non-free-firmware

Here, someone has added non-free.  If that's not what you want, you
can remove that.  You should *keep* non-free-firmware, though.

Also, if you don't want to use plain http, you can change this to https.


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
non-free-firmware

This one is incorrect, but someone else already addressed that one.
Be sure you actually follow their instructions correctly.  The
hostnames security.debian.org and ftp.security.debian.org are not
the same.


I have tried many permutations of the last line in this sources.list

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD 
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free 
non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free 
non-free-firmware


# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main non-free 
non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security 
main non-free non-free-firmware


None have worked perfectly, apt-get update gives this

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:3 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Err:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
  Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out

Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch 
http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/dists/bookworm-security/InRelease 
Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# vi sources.list

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

Hi,

gene heskett wrote:
> > where did the extra 19.4G's come from? Can filesystem
> > ext4's overhead account for that?

In an earlier mail:

> > > command line: rsync -a --bwlimit=10m --fsync --progress /home/ 
> > > /mnt/homevol

David Christensen wrote:
> Please RTFM rsync(1) to choose your options.  These look
> useful:
>--archive, -a   (-rlptgoD)
>--delete
>--hard-links, -H
>--one-file-system, -x
>--sparse, -S

I bet on --hard-links and --sparse as means to avoid the extra disk space
consumption. (--archive is important for other reasons, but it was
already in use as -a with your successful rsync run. --delete will be
of importance if the rsync run gets repeated on the already filled target
directory tree.)

man rsync:

 -H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and
link together the corresponding files on the destination.  With‐
out  this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as
though they were separate files.
[...]
 -S, --sparse
Try  to  handle  sparse  files  efficiently so they take up less
space on the destination. [...]

One can observe a similar inflation effect when copying the files of a
Debian installation ISO to hard disk. In the original disk directory
on the machine which created the ISO there were hardlinked kernels and
firmware packages. In the ISO these link siblings share the same file
content storage.
But when mounted, the siblings get treated as separate files with
different inode numbers. So the 8,135,584 bytes of the hardlink siblings
  /install.amd/gtk/vmlinuz
  /install.amd/vmlinuz
  /install.amd/xen/vmlinuz
get triplicated when these three files get copied out of the ISO.

I am somewhat astonished that --hard-links is not default in rsync,
as it is quite important for backup fidelity.
(On the other hand it is some effort to find all siblings on the disk.)

Sparse files are files with large areas of 0-bytes. Many filesystems
don't store the zeros but rather an instruction to hand out the given
number of 0-bytes when requested by a reader.

If i were you, i'd let rsync make a complete new copy with --hard-links
--sparse, and --delete, but without --bwlimit= in order to get a higher
copy fidelity and also to check whether the transfer speed really was not
to blame for the appearance of the OOM killer.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas George




On 1/17/24 19:05, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 11:31:52AM -0500, Thomas George wrote:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware

This one, before you commented it out, only contained non-free-firmware
and *not* non-free.  They are two different sections.


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

Here, someone has added non-free.  If that's not what you want, you
can remove that.  You should *keep* non-free-firmware, though.

Also, if you don't want to use plain http, you can change this to https.


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
non-free-firmware

This one is incorrect, but someone else already addressed that one.
Be sure you actually follow their instructions correctly.  The
hostnames security.debian.org and ftp.security.debian.org are not
the same.


I have tried many permutations of the last line in this sources.list

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.2.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD 
Binary-1 with firmware 20231007-10:29]/ bookworm main non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free 
non-free-firmware


# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main non-free 
non-free-firmware


deb http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security 
main non-free non-free-firmware


None have worked perfectly, apt-get update gives this

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:3 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Ign:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
Err:4 http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security 
InRelease
  Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out

Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch 
http://ftp.security-debian.org/debian-security/dists/bookworm-security/InRelease 
Could not connect to ftp.security-debian.org:80 (57.128.81.193), 
connection timed out
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# vi sources.list

no sound

2024-01-17 Thread Maureen L Thomas

Well I did a back-up, that didn't work, but I didn't know it at the 
time, and did a reinstallation from scratch.  I now have my sound back 
after I added back ports to my repositories.  I now have a system that 
works but I cannot find any utility to fix the top bar the way I want 
it.  Any hints?


Moe

Re: No Release file for Security Update

2024-01-17 Thread Thomas George




On 1/17/24 16:13, Tom Furie wrote:

Thomas George  writes:


deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-security  main non-free
non-free-firmware
Err:5 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-security Release
    404  Not Found [IP: 151.101.

I entered you suggested line as

http://security.debian.org/debian-security

and apt-get update responded:

E: Malformed line 9 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (type)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

Please keep replies on-list in future, for the benefit of anyone else
who might encounter a similar problem.

You still need the rest of the line, I only indicated the correct
URL. The full line should look like: (it might get wrapped but should
all be a single line)

http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free 
non-free-firmware

Cheers,
Tom


Still not right bur InRelease:

root@Phoenix:/etc/apt# apt-get update
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease

Hit:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:3 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:4 https://linux.brostrend.com stable InRelease
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease
Ign:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease
Err:1 http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-secutity 
InRelease

  Could not resolve 'ftp.security.debian.org'
Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch 
http://ftp.security.debian.org/debian-security/dists/bookworm-secutity/InRelease 
Could not resolve 'ftp.security.debian.org'
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.


I tried leavin security.debian.org out of the line but that didn't work 
either

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

Hi,

i wrote:
> > What did finally help ? Just the shorter terminal scroll back memory ?

gene heskett wrote:
> That, and possibly the --bwlimit=10m, giving the SSD time to keep their
> stuff in one sock.

Then i place my bet on the terminal alone.
Linux is able to handle disk-to-disk copies that are larger than the
available memory. This is a standard use case.

> > How large was it set when your runs caused the OOM killer to act ?

> different terminal, xfce4's is apparently unlimited but can't find it in the
> config prefs.

I normally start new xterms by

  xterm -ls -geometry 80x24 -bg wheat -fg black -sl 1 +sb &

The -sl option gives the number of lines to be memorized for scrollback.
Black-on-wheat is a calmative color combination which does not overwork
the eyes.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help

Hi,

i see that i messed up "h" and "k" in my explanation of the fight over
the link targets in /dev/disk/by-id. So another attempt:

sdh has a unique serial number GSTD02TB230102. Thus we see in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2024/01/msg00667.html
these two links:

  /dev/sdh/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTD02TB230102
  /dev/sdh1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTD02TB230102-part1

sdi and sdj share the serial number GST02TBG221146. So the concurrent
attempts to create the links let only these two survive:

  /dev/sdi/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GST02TBG221146
  /dev/sdj1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GST02TBG221146-part1

sdk and sdl share GSTG02TB230206. The survivors are:

  /dev/sdk/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTG02TB230206
  /dev/sdk1   /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Gigastone_SSD_GSTG02TB230206-part1

The next system startup might yield other survivors.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: smartctl cannot access my storage, need syntax help